Pokemon Expeditions The Story of Sunset Gym
by P.L.S
Summary: x-over with pokemon Once upon a time, John Sheppard had to run away to become a Pokemon Master. Far far away, Rodney McKay's life was destroyed by Mewtwo. This is the story of the leaders of Sunset Gym.
1. Chapter 1

Title: John Sheppard – The High Flying Runaway

Series: Pokémon Expeditions: The History of the Dual Masters of the Sunset Gym

Author: plsteward

Genre: Gen, Adventure, Drama

Fandom/s: Pokémon & Stargate: Atlantis

Rating: G

Characters: John Sheppard, David Sheppard, and Colonel Sheppard [SG:A Dratini (and evolved forms), Eevee, Fearow, Taillow, Pidgeot, Staraptor, and Swellow [PM

Spoilers: For any and all Pokémon games & series. Stargate: Atlantis- Season Four: Outcast.

Notes: OMG, this is a long header. It's easier when I choose to be lazy about it.

----

When John Sheppard was five, his mom left the Sheppard Mansion, in Lavender Town, and never came back. His dad, the former Colonel Joseph Sheppard, said she went to help a friend or that she just needed to take a break for a bit from being a mom. He didn't say much about her, but John could see the anger in his eyes and hear the hurt in his voice.

The cook said that his mom was wind and his dad was stone and that no matter how heavy the stone cant hold down the wind. John always thought that it meant that his mom was now air or some kind of pixie. It was a cool thing to picture.

His baby brother, David, never really knew her and didn't care because he had Rachel, the au pair, to play with him. He noticed that after a month, her photographs vanished and her things were all locked away in a caged corner of the attic. John tried to pick the lock, but after every try, the lock would be upgraded to something harder to figure out.

The bare spots, left over, were slowly filled in with photos of David, his dad's radio stations, or just the sunset at Pokémon Tower and other famous sites of Lavender Town. Their home became just a house and their dad was never there.

John thought he understood everything, but really, he didn't figure out anything out of the mess their lives had become. The only thing he ever figured out was that, without his mom, there wasn't a family under the Sheppard roof.

----

The night John turned six, he found the first pokéball he had ever seen for real (and not just on a TV screen or advertisement in his mom's old magazines) under his pillow and a note in an unfamiliar script, that told him that if he took care of what was inside it, he'd find a true friend.

Inside, was a small blue baby dragon with no limbs but big eyes and a blue orb on her tail. Quickly, he looked her up online and found out she was a rare pokémon called a Dratini. After that, he spent the whole day in the pantry trying to figure out what she'd like to eat.

The next evening, John named her after the only thing she'd eat or drink that first day out of her ball. Lemonade.

----

When John was eight, his dad found Lemonade swimming in the indoor pool. His dad let him keep Lemonade but forbade him any other pokémon. He also made John promise never to let David help train her or let him know she was anything other than a pet. John never understood why his dad looked at him so sadly from that day on.

----

When John was ten, Lemonade and he won small battles all over town against the kids in the pokémon clubs. He had to sneak away from everyone to do so because the last time his dad saw Lemonade and him battle he grounded John for a month and kept Lemonade in her ball for a whole week. John hated his dad for his treatment of Lemonade more than anything and stopped talking to his dad about stuff other than what he had to.

----

When John was thirteen no one else in town wanted to battle him. They all liked him and Lemonade, but everyone knew that Lemonade was too strong now for them. The only kids in town who would have, had left to become real pokémon masters or breeders.

Now it was the trainers who were just passing through would take him on in one-on-one matches and keep him and Lemonade entertained. Nurse Joy told him to stop hurting the out-of-towners soon and threatened to tell his dad that Lemonade had been bullying the other pokémon (which was a dirty rotten lie.)

In that year, Lemonade also changed, grew up from a Dratini into a Dragonair, which was very cool. She was bigger and more interesting to look at. To John, he made all the other pokémon look boring. She still had her big glassy eyes, but now she had a horn that looked like spun silver and wings on the side of her head that had feathery scales with silver and golden tips.

She also learned ice and water attacks with more ease, but dragon type moves were what she felt the strongest doing. Her Dragon Dance was beautiful and when she was stuck in Outrage, no one in town but John could stop her destructive confusion.

----

When John was sixteen, three out-of-town trainers stopped him in the middle of him and Lemonade teaching the smaller kids and their pokémon how to use Double Team. They asked him for a fight to earn the town gym's badge and the kids laughed. Mitch, the smallest of the lot informed them that the town didn't have a gym.

"But, we heard stories about the gym leader with a super strong Dragonair. And he's teaching y'all like a gym leader," said the skinny boy with pink hair and leather pants. He tossed a pokéball up and caught it in his other hand.

"But I'm not a gym leader," John said with a shrug. "The next League town is Saffron City." Lavender Town wasn't the kind of town to host a gym. The people loved pokémon, but hated to hurt them.

Away from the center of town & the Tower Temple, you'd find trainers and breeders. However, in town, people had only had pokémon as pets or whatever. "You'll have better luck in Saffron or Vermillion." John shrugged and turned back to the kids and started talking them through drills for them and their pokémon to run. He was surprised to see one of the trainers, join the kids.

"I've never taught my Eevee to use Double Team. I never really understood why it was used," explained the woman who was running the drill with her Eevee, "So, even if we can't win anything, we can take something away from this trip." John agreed and allowed them all to join in or just watch as he finished the session up before sunset.

That night he thought about the trainers.

The next day he talked with Lemonade.

The next week he ran away from home, after he finished sitting his high school graduation exams.

A month later, he understood why his mom left their pretentious home outside of dreary Lavender Town. The world was alive with people and pokémon. There were so many things to see, pokémon to battle and to catch.

John also knew he couldn't stay in Kanto for too long so he hopped on the Mag-Rail as soon as he won enough money from informal battles and went to Johto, then the outer most Orange Islands to escape his father's attempts to bring him back to Lavender Town.

----

John found out after three years of travels, that he tended to prefer to train bird pokémon, or at least flying pokémon.

Lemonade was playing freeze tag with a flock of Taillows and Swellows that had followed him from Johto. The flock was slowly getting pokéballs and names, but only by their choice, because John wasn't sure what he could do with seventeen Taillows and five Swellows.

She was most at home in the air now that she was a Dragonite and boy did he love traveling on her back. She speeds she went, the stunts, the joy of the sky; John couldn't think of anything more fun than riding her over the ocean and skimming the surface, then touching the clouds an instant later. It was his first ride on her that he figured out just what type of pokémon he understood the best.

He started to stop just traveling to collect badges and battles. Instead, he was seeking out the birds and the winged ones to study and train if they let him. So far, he had an aviary worth of pokémon who stayed around him. It was hard work to keep them all liking the others, because it seemed that territoriality was a trait that most bird types and a good portion of the flyers had.

He pondered over whether or not he actually could settle down as a breeder or researcher. He had quite a few pokémon, and unless they were solitary, he tended to end up with whole flocks at once, which was not conducive to travel. Especially, not when he had spent time on the run.

His father had not quite disowned him, but defiantly stopped looking for him when he was eighteen. It was hard for John to admit that somewhere inside that hurt, but for the most part, he was glad for the reprieve. It had been difficult trying to travel around while on the run from his father's buddies, detectives, and bounty hunters. He had to spend most of his time in either crowded cities or in the middle of nowhere and couldn't settle for a bit to do the more intensive training, which he and Lemonade used to do at home, with his newer pokémon.

John camped out on one of the Seafoam Islands, watching as his Pidgeot, Staraptor, and Fearow raced over the waves of the rocky coast. It was awesome how easy they moved through the air.

For the moment, he was settled enough, just watching his winged friends.


	2. Chapter 2

Title: Meredith McKay – The Stray Psychic of Cinnabar Labs

Series: Pokémon Expeditions: The History of the Dual Masters of the Sunset Gym

Author: plsteward

Genre: Gen, Adventure, Drama

Fandom/s: Pokémon & Stargate: Atlantis

Rating: G

Characters: Rodney McKay and Jeannie McKay [SG: A Blaine, Sabrina, Mewtwo, Gastly, Gangar, Abra, and Alakazam [PM

Spoilers: For any and all Pokémon games & series. Stargate SG-1- Season Six: Redemption Part 2. Stargate: Atlantis- Season One: Letters to Pegasus, Season Four: Dr. McKay & Mrs. Miller, Miller's Crossing.

Notes: Again, this is a long header for me. Sorry. BTW, I like Meredith. It just sounds better and suits him more in this 'verse.

----

When Meredith McKay was three years old, his mom grew round in the middle and half way through the year, she left for the hospital and came back with a little creature. She called it Jeannie, his baby sister. Meredith was at times amused by her and annoyed by her. She cried, spat, pooped, ate, slept, smiled, laughed, and was cooed over by all the grown ups. The only adult who didn't forget about him was Uncle Blaine.

His uncle took him through the labs they all lived in and introduced him to Abra, to Alakazam, to the little thing in the bubbling tank. He was told the little thing was going to be the strongest pokémon ever. His uncle taught him about computers, science, DNA, and the beauty of creating life from the smallest blocks of living materials.

Meredith spends the next two years tailing Uncle Blaine and the lab techs that build the computers and are willing to teach him how to put together chips, processors, and wires to make something that can re-write the universe.

----

When Meredith was six he was off visiting with a lady named Sabrina for a week. She was a specialist in psychic pokémon and she had offered a kind of summer camp by invitation. His uncle and mom both noted that his time playing with the pokémon in the labs, all psychic types, had given him a talent for understanding them and their abilities.

That time spent with the pokémon also affected him in ways that they knew they couldn't fully utilize or teach him about. Jeannie had been forbidden from the labs after they saw what his early exposure had really done. She had been sent to a boarding school as soon as she was old enough just to keep her safe. However, with Meredith, they had tried, but spending more than eight days away from the labs caused him headaches, illness, and once, when he was five and away at the boarding school that Jeannie now attended, a mini-coma.

Sabrina understood and was helping him build walls, to understand what he was hearing and dreaming. It was so weird to have a person who understood that at times Mewtwo's voice scared him.

It was on the third day, he stopped in his tracks, and Sabrina stopped beside him. She picked him up whispering, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," repeatedly in his ears. She carried him back to living quarters of her gym as she sent calming waves of peace into his emotional core. He spent the rest of the trip in a kind of shock.

He got the visit two days later. A man from a university, which funded the research, came to tell him of the deaths of all of his family, the pokémon, and the utter violence that Mewtwo's awakening erupted in. The next day, his Uncle Blaine came and took him to the school where Jeannie was. He put an electromagnetic amulet around Meredith's neck and left with apologies and telling him that he is now an orphan who may be adopted. Meredith hears it, but doesn't understand it until one day he wakes to Jeannie telling him about a nice lady and man who want her to be theirs.

Jeannie writes him a few times after that. Then the letters stop, which Meredith understands, they were never close because he was weird and she was normal. He only sends cards for her birthday and he only gets cards on his. He still feels something for her, but he's never really missed her. His classmates, teachers, and the school psychologist all tell him that it's wrong, but he never really spent time with Jeannie. He doesn't want to grieve, to say that his childhood home is gone.

----

Meredith is eight when his class goes on a history field trip. They go on an over-night trip to see the Tin and Brass (now Burned) Towers of Ecruteak City in Johto. It's the culmination of their yearlong unit on pokémon/human relations through time.

He listens to the history, the stories, and the facts that both the professors and his group guide. However, at sunset he finds himself alone at the top of the tower, taking off the protection that Blaine had given him and opened himself up to the energies of the towers and the pokémon that called it home.

With in a moment he was surrounded by Gastlys and felt the coldness of Gengar take him. Meredith was aware of the world and the actions that Gengar used him to carry out, but just couldn't push his way up from under the fog of possession. He couldn't fight because he just didn't care about the world or himself.


	3. Chapter 3

Title: Breaking the Chains – Awaking McKay

Series: Pokémon Expeditions: The History of the Dual Masters of the Sunset Gym

Author: plsteward

Genre: Gen, Adventure, Drama

Fandom/s: Pokémon & Stargate: Atlantis

Rating: G

Characters: Rodney McKay and John Sheppard [SG: A Sabrina, Gastly, Gangar, Darkrai, Dragonite, Rayquaza, Duskull, Staraptor, Pidgeot, and Espion [PM

Spoilers: For any and all Pokémon games & series. Stargate SG-1- Season Six: Redemption Part 2. Stargate: Atlantis- Season One: The Rising, Letters to Pegasus, Season Four: Dr. McKay & Mrs. Miller, Miller's Crossing, and Outcast.

Notes:

----

The Darkrai was a whisper that the sailors talked about in hushed tones. It was said that the pokémon delighted in hurting others, that it ate the good dreams and old left nightmares for children. It was also said that ghost type pokémon were being called to Newmoon Island for something sinister that was brewing.

That was like a red flag to a bull for John Sheppard and Lemonade. The two hated bullies and from the rumors among pokémon & people that both were hearing, the Darkrai was a first rate bully. They also heard stories of a boy that traveled in a cloud of Gastlys and had the presence of a Gengar.

The little old psychic lady in town said that it was because the boy gave himself to the angry ghost pokémon in a moment of grief. She also told him that the boy just needed to be reminded that life wasn't all bad and the possession would break. She also put a pokéball in his hand.

"Trust her, she'll know when she's needed by him." Said the old lady, looking up into John's eyes. The little old lady wasn't that old really. John almost thought he recognized her.

"'Kay," John replied as he shrunk the ball and put in his pants pocket.

"Now, go, save him," she said letting her dark eyes burn her orders into his brain.

Therefore, with that mission, John mounted Lemonade and the two flew off over the ocean to Newmoon Island to find the boy and stop the Darkrai.

----

Meredith knew that the new presence wasn't good. He felt colder than even Gengar and gave off waves of anger and darkness. Nevertheless, Meredith just couldn't find the energy to breakaway as Gengar gave him up and Darkrai filled him.

Darkrai was full of dreams and nightmares, wishes and curses, hopes and hate. The ghost was such a mass of contradictions that it didn't think really, it just pulled in power and lashed out. Meredith's hand raised and was filled with psychic fire. Darkrai had never entered someone that could handle his power for real, but Meredith could without slowly dying like the others had. However, the power was slowly taking his mind over, flushing out memories, and creating new synapses too.

Meredith felt fear for the first time in twelve years as soon as he realized he was about to lose what was left of himself to this darkness. However, he still couldn't do more than offer the most paltry of objections.

----

"Okay Lem, this is Darkmoon, right?" At Lemonade's nod of affirmation, John got off her back and looked around. He didn't have a clue where to look. They had done a fly over by the island was a dense wood, dark and forbidding. They had landed on the only clear spot, a rocky outcropping on the easternmost tip.

John pulled out the pokéball that the psychic had given him, "So, when are you going to help?" The ball just sat in his hand. John looked at Lemonade. She was up in the air, kind of flying in place, looking.

John put away the pokéball and pulled the balls off his belt. "Go, guys!" Out of the balls came a flock of various flying pokémon. "We've gotta find a kid and the Darkrai. Fan out and if either are found raise all kinds of noise but don't engage unless you are left with no option."

The birds and one young green gold Rayquaza flew off into the dense forest.

Pidgeot found the boy and the ghosts in the woods. With his loudest cry, he and all the rest of the hunting party came and lead Lemonade and John arrived just as Rayquaza attempted to wrap around the guy. It looked like the dragon had him trapped, but then the guy on the ground was surrounded in violet flames and Rayquaza was knocked back.

John looked closer at the guy, he looked fairly close to John's age, so not really a boy like the rumors had stated. John reclaimed Rayquaza and jumped off Lemonade just before a flock of flying skulls rammed her. Duskull, his mind absently filled in. He looked up; all his birds were engaged in fighting ghost pokémon of some type.

"Why?" Asked the guy in an otherworldly voice. John was brought back to earth by the eerie voice.

"Why what?" John cocked his head and winced as Staraptor was thrown to the ground behind the guy.

"Why are you here? You knew it was dangerous. You knew you wouldn't have an advantage. Why would you be sent?"

John shrugged. The guy extended his hand and John was caught in a shimmering fog that lifted him up and held him tight. The guy walked up and touched two fingers to John's forehead.

" i Sabrina /i " The guy gasped in anger.

The boy's body dropped onto the ground and above him floated a ghost type with a plume of white, blue eyes, and a body like a tattered black cloak. It roared and all the ghosts finished off their prey, each and every one of John's birds fainted and fell to the ground. Lemonade was pushed to the ground and forced into sleep.

John was scared at that moment that he had sentenced his friends to death by coming to Newmoon. It was at that point of despair that the last pokéball glowed and out of it came a violet cat/fox that seemed to just float inches above the ground. It looked at John, as if to say "And you doubted i me /i ?"

The Espion then stepped to the right and nuzzled at the guy's short light brown hair. It looked up sharply at the Darkrai and then pounced. In a series of lightening quick strikes the two clashed and the lesser ghost pokémon took the opportunity to fade into the shadows.

Soon, to John at least, the Darkrai faded into the shadows as well and the Espion walked back to the guy and curled up next to him.

"Hey, can you let me down?!"

----

"You're not my type. But thanks for finally letting me help, and helping us out." He was foggy headed and was just hearing words, an unfamiliar voice. It was a pleasant voice. There was a brush of fur and a slightly cool, wet sensation. He batted it away and rolled over, and regretted it as his head exploded in pain.

"Oh, you're awake." Said the voice. A cup of water was pressed to his mouth and then a pill followed it. "There that should help with that headache. Espy was insistent that you'd have one." He opened his eyes to a youngish face topped with spiky and out of control dark hair and laughing green eyes.

"Who are you?"

"I'm John Sheppard, formally of Lavender Town."

"Oh." He looked around and his eyes fell on the Espion. "Sabrina sent you?"

"Yeah, I guess. It was a psychic lady and she made me bring him along." Sheppard said, "What's your name?"

"McKay."

"Cool. I need you to eat something then we need to get away before Darkrai decides that Espy isn't that much of a threat and starts after you again."

With that Sheppard turns to rummage in a knapsack and Espion started filling his mind with what it knew and what McKay's posession by Darkrai had pushed out. He absently ran his fingers through his soft lavender fur as they connected mentally, soothing his nerves and anger at himself.

"'Snot really your fault." Sheppard said softly as he put a food bar in McKay's hand, "At least, the whole giving into a way to keep your emotions safe. You were a kid. Still kinda are, but in any case it was understandable." Sheppard sat and started eating a food bar too, "But don't take my word for it, I don't know the details." He said between bites. He made a face at the food, "Blech, these taste like cardboard."

"I don't know. I like it." Said McKay with a crooked smile.


End file.
